The connection between science and art--The mendacious sciences;
the trivial sciences--Science should deal with the great
problems of human life and serve as a basis for art.
APPENDICES
Appendix I. Translations of French poems and prose quoted in
Chap. X of _What is Art?_
Appendix II. Translation from Mallarmé.
Appendix III. Poems by Henri de Régnier, Vielé-Griffin, Verhaeren,
Moréas, and Montesquiou, with translations.
Appendix IV. The contents of Wagner’s _Nibelungen Ring_.
(This Table of Contents is compiled by the translator.)
CHAPTER I
_Time and labour spent on art. Lives stunted in its service.
Morality sacrificed to, and anger justified by, art. The
rehearsal of the opera described._
Take up any one of our ordinary newspapers and you will find a part
devoted to the theatre and music. In almost every number you will
find a description of some art-exhibition or of some particular
picture, and you will always find reviews of new works of art that
have appeared: of volumes of poems, of short stories, or of novels.
Promptly and in detail as soon as it has occurred, an account is
published of how such and such an actress or actor played this or
that rôle in such and such a drama, comedy, or opera, and of the
merits of the performance; as well as of the contents of the new
drama, comedy, or opera, with its defects and merits. With as much
care and detail or even more, we are told how such and such an
artist has sung a certain piece, or has played it on the piano or
violin, and what were the merits and defects of the piece and of the
performance. In every large town there is sure to be at least one,
if not more than one, exhibition of new pictures, the merits and
defects of which are discussed in the utmost detail by critics and
connoisseurs.
New novels and poems, in separate volumes or in the magazines, appear
almost every day, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give
their readers detailed accounts of these artistic productions.
For the support of art in Russia (where for the education of the
people only a hundredth part is spent of what would be required to
give everyone an opportunity of instruction) the Government grants
millions of roubles in subsidies to academies, conservatoires, and
theatres. In France twenty million francs are assigned for art, and
similar grants are made in Germany and elsewhere.
In every large town enormous buildings are erected for museums,
academies, conservatoires, dramatic schools, and for performances
and concerts. Hundreds of thousands of workmen,--carpenters, masons,
painters, joiners, paperhangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewellers,
moulders, type-setters,--spend their whole lives in hard labour to
satisfy the demands of art; so that hardly any other department of
human activity, the military excepted, consumes so much energy as
this.
Not only is enormous labour spent on this activity, but in it as in
war the very lives of men are sacrificed. Hundreds of thousands of
people devote their lives from childhood to learning to twirl their
legs rapidly (dancers), or to touch notes and strings very rapidly
(musicians), or to draw with paint and represent what they see
(artists), or to turn every phrase inside out and find a rhyme to
every word. And these people, often very kind and clever and capable
of all sorts of useful labour, grow savage over their specialised
and stupefying occupations and become one-sided and self-complacent
specialists, dull to all the serious phenomena of life and skilful
only at rapidly twisting their legs, their tongues, or their fingers.
But even this stunting of human life is not the worst. I remember
being once at the rehearsal of one of the most ordinary of the new
operas which are produced at all the opera houses of Europe and
America.
I arrived when the first act had already commenced. To reach the
auditorium I had to pass through the stage-entrance. By dark
entrances and passages, past immense machines for changing the
scenery and for lighting the stage and the theatre, I was led
through the vaults of an enormous building; and there in the gloom
and dust I saw workmen busily engaged. One of these men--pale,
haggard, in a dirty blouse, with dirty, work-worn hands and cramped
fingers, evidently tired and out of humour--went past me, angrily
scolding another man. Ascending by a dark stair, I came out on the
boards behind the scenes. Amid various poles and rings and scattered
scenery decorations and curtains, stood and moved dozens, if not
hundreds, of painted and dressed-up men in costumes fitting tight to
their thighs and calves, and also women, who were as usual, as nearly
nude as might be. These were all singers, or members of the chorus,
or ballet-dancers, awaiting their turns. My guide led me across the
stage and, by means of a bridge of boards, across the orchestra (in
which perhaps a hundred musicians of all kinds, from kettle-drum to
flute and harp, were seated), to the dark pit-stalls.
On an elevation between two lamps with reflectors and in an arm-chair
placed before a music-stand, sat the director of the musical part,
_bâton_ in hand, managing the orchestra and singers and in general
the production of the whole opera.
The performance had already commenced, and on the stage was being
represented a procession of Indians who had brought home a bride.
Besides men and women in costume, two other men in ordinary clothes
bustled and ran about on the stage: one was the director of the
dramatic part, and the other, who stepped about in soft shoes and ran
from place to place with unusual agility, was the dancing-master,
whose salary per month exceeded what ten labourers earn in a year.
These three directors arranged the singing, the orchestra, and the
procession. The procession, as usual, was enacted by men and women
in couples with tinfoil halberds on their shoulders. They all came
from one place and walked round and round again and then stopped.
The procession took a long time to arrange: first the Indians with
halberds came on too late, then too soon; then at the right time, but
crowded together at the exit; then they did not crowd, but arranged
themselves badly at the sides of the stage,--and each time the whole
performance was stopped and recommenced from the beginning. The
procession is preceded by a recitative, delivered by a man dressed
up like some variety of Turk, who, opening his mouth in a curious
way, sings, “Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” He sings, and waves his
arm (which is of course bare) from under his mantle. The procession
commences. But here the French horn, in the accompaniment of the
recitative, does something wrong; and the director, with a shudder as
if some catastrophe had occurred, raps with his stick on the stand.
All is stopped, and the director, turning to the orchestra, attacks
the French horn, scolding him in the rudest terms, as cabmen abuse
one another, for taking the wrong note. And again the whole thing
recommences. The Indians with their halberds again come on, treading
softly in their extraordinary boots; again the singer sings, “Home I
bring the bri-i-ide.” But here the pairs get too close together. More
raps with the stick, more scolding, and a recommencement. Again “Home
I bring the bri-i-ide,” again the same gesticulation with the bare
arm from under the mantle, and again the couples, treading softly
with halberds on their shoulders, some with sad and serious faces,
some talking and smiling, arrange themselves in a circle and begin
to sing. All seems to be going well, but again the stick raps and
the director, in a distressed and angry voice, begins to scold the
men and women of the chorus. It appears that when singing they had
omitted to raise their hands from time to time in sign of animation.
“Are you all dead, or what? Cows that you are! Are you corpses,
that you can’t move?” Again they re-commence, “Home I bring the
bri-i-ide,” and again, with sorrowful faces, the chorus women sing,
first one and then another of them raising their hands. But two
chorus-girls speak to each other,--again a more vehement rapping with
the stick. “Have you come here to talk? Can’t you gossip at home? You
there in red breeches, come nearer. Look at me! Begin again!” Again
“Home I bring the bri-i-ide.” And so it goes on for one, two, three
hours. The whole of such a rehearsal lasts six hours on end. Raps
with the stick, repetitions, placings, corrections of the singers,
of the orchestra, of the procession, of the dancers,--all seasoned
with angry scolding. I heard the words, “asses,” “fools,” “idiots,”
“swine,” addressed to the musicians and singers at least forty times
in the course of one hour. And the unhappy individual to whom the
abuse is addressed--flautist, horn-blower, or singer,--physically
and mentally demoralised, does not reply and does what is demanded
of him. Twenty times is repeated the one phrase, “Home I bring the
bri-i-ide,” and twenty times the striding about in yellow shoes with
a halberd over the shoulder. The conductor knows that these people
are so demoralised that they are no longer fit for anything but to
blow trumpets and walk about with halberds and in yellow shoes,
and that they are also accustomed to dainty easy living, so that
they will put up with anything rather than lose their luxurious
life. He therefore gives free vent to his churlishness, especially
as he has seen the same thing done in Paris and Vienna, and knows
that this is the way the best conductors behave, and that it is a
musical tradition of great artists to be so carried away by the great
business of their art that they cannot pause to consider the feelings
of other artists.
It would be difficult to find a more repulsive sight. I have seen
one workman abuse another for not supporting the weight piled upon
him when goods were being unloaded, or, at hay-stacking, the village
Elder scold a peasant for not making the rick right, and the man
submitted in silence. And however unpleasant it was to witness the
scene, the unpleasantness was lessened by the consciousness that
the business in hand was necessary and important and that the fault
for which the Elder scolded the labourer was one which might spoil a
needful undertaking.
But what was being done here? For what, and for whom? Very likely the
conductor was tired out, like the workman I passed in the vaults;
it was even evident that he was; but who made him tire himself? And
why was he tiring himself? The opera he was rehearsing was one of
the most ordinary of operas for people who are accustomed to them,
but also one of the most gigantic absurdities that could possibly
be devised. An Indian king wants to marry; they bring him a bride;
he disguises himself as a minstrel; the bride falls in love with
the minstrel and is in despair, but afterwards discovers that the
minstrel is the king, and everyone is highly delighted.
That there never were, or could be, such Indians, and that they
were not only unlike Indians, but that what they were doing was
unlike anything on earth except other operas, was beyond all manner
of doubt; that people do not converse in such a way as recitative,
and do not place themselves at fixed distances, in a quartet,
waving their arms to express their emotions; that nowhere, except
in theatres, do people walk about in such a manner, in pairs, with
tinfoil halberds and in slippers; that no one ever gets angry in such
a way, or is affected in such a way, or laughs in such a way, or
cries in such a way; and that no one on earth can be moved by such
performances,--all this is beyond the possibility of doubt.
Instinctively the question presents itself: For whom is this being
done? Whom _can_ it please? If there are occasionally good melodies
in the opera to which it is pleasant to listen, they could have been
sung simply, without these stupid costumes and all the processions
and recitatives and hand-wavings.
The ballet, in which half-naked women make voluptuous movements,
twisting themselves into various sensual wreathings, is simply a lewd
performance.
So one is quite at a loss as to whom these things are done for. The
man of culture is heartily sick of them, while to a real working man
they are utterly incomprehensible. If anyone can be pleased by these
things (which is doubtful), it can only be some young footman or
depraved artisan, who has contracted the spirit of the upper classes
but is not yet satiated with their amusements and wishes to show his
breeding.
And all this nasty folly is prepared, not simply, nor with kindly
merriment, but with anger and brutal cruelty.
It is said that it is all done for the sake of art, and that art
is a very important thing. But is it true that art is so important
that such sacrifices should be made for its sake? This question is
especially urgent, because art, for the sake of which the labour of
millions, the lives of men and, above all, love between man and man,
are all being sacrificed,--this very art is becoming something more
and more vague and uncertain to human perception.
Criticism, in which the lovers of art used to find support for their
opinions, has latterly become so self-contradictory that if we
exclude from the domain of art all to which the critics of various
schools themselves deny the title, there is scarcely any art left.
The artists of various sects, like the theologians of various sects,
mutually exclude and destroy one another. Listen to the artists of
the schools of our times, and in all branches you will find each
set of artists disowning others. In poetry the old romanticists
deny the parnassians and the decadents; the parnassians disown the
romanticists and the decadents; the decadents disown all their
predecessors and the symbolists; the symbolists disown all their
predecessors and _les mages_; and _les mages_ disown all, all their
predecessors.
Among novelists we have naturalists, psychologists, and
“nature-ists,” all rejecting each other. And it is the same in
dramatic art, in painting, and in music. So that art, which demands
such tremendous labour-sacrifices from the people, which stunts human
lives and transgresses against human love, is not only _not_ a thing
clearly and firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory
ways by its own devotees that it is difficult to say what is meant by
art, and especially what is good, useful art,--art for the sake of
which we might condone such sacrifices as are being offered at its
shrine.
CHAPTER II
_Does art compensate for so much evil? What is art? Confusion
of opinions. Is it “that which produces beauty”? The word
“beauty” in Russian. Chaos in esthetics._
For the production of every ballet, circus, opera, operetta,
exhibition, picture, concert, or printed book, the intense and
unwilling labour of thousands and thousands of people is needed at
what is often harmful and humiliating work. It were well if artists
made all they require for themselves, but as it is they all need
the help of workmen, not only to produce art, but also for their
own usually luxurious maintenance. And one way or other they get
it, either through payments from rich people, or through subsidies
given by Government (in Russia, for instance, in grants of millions
of roubles to theatres, conservatoires and academies). This money is
collected from the people, some of whom have to sell their only cow
to pay the tax, and who never get those esthetic pleasures which art
gives.
It was all very well for a Greek or Roman artist, or even for a
Russian artist of the first half of the nineteenth century (when
there still were slaves and it was considered right that there should
be), with a quiet mind to make people serve him and his art; but in
our day, when in all men there is at least some dim perception of the
equal rights of all, it is impossible to constrain people to labour
unwillingly for art, without first deciding the question whether it
is true that art is so good and so important an affair as to redeem
this evil.
If not, we have the terrible probability to consider, that while
fearful sacrifices of the labour and lives of men and of morality
itself are being made to art, that same art may be not only useless
but even harmful.
And therefore it is necessary for a society in which works of art
arise and are supported, to find out whether all that professes to
be art is really art; whether (as is presupposed in our society) all
that is art is good, and whether it is important, and worth those
sacrifices which it necessitates. It is still more necessary for
every conscientious artist to know this, in order that he may be
sure that all he does has a valid meaning,--that it is not merely
an infatuation of the small circle of people among whom he lives
which excites in him the false assurance that he is doing a good
work--and that what he takes from others for the support of his often
very luxurious life will be compensated for by those productions at
which he works. And that is why answers to the above questions are
especially important in our time.
What is this art, which is considered so important and necessary for
humanity that for its sake these sacrifices of labour, of human life,
and even of goodness, may be made?
“What is art? What a question! Art is architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, and poetry in all its forms,” usually replies the
ordinary man, the art amateur, or even the artist himself, imagining
the matter about which he is talking to be perfectly clear, and
uniformly understood by everybody. But in architecture, one inquires
further, are there not simple buildings which are not objects of art,
and buildings with artistic pretensions which are unsuccessful and
ugly and therefore not to be considered as works of art?--wherein
lies the characteristic sign of a work of art?
It is the same in sculpture, in music, and in poetry. Art, in all its
forms, is bounded on one side by the practically useful and on the
other by unsuccessful attempts at art. How is art to be marked off
from each of these? The ordinary educated man of our circle, and even
the artist who has not occupied himself specially with esthetics,
will not hesitate at this question either. He thinks the solution has
been found long ago, and is well known to everyone.
“Art is such activity as produces beauty,” says such a man.
If art consists in that,--then is a ballet or an operetta art? you
inquire.
“Yes,” says the ordinary man, though with some hesitation, “a good
ballet or a graceful operetta is also art, in so far as it manifests
beauty.”
But without even asking the ordinary man what differentiates the
“good” ballet and the “graceful” operetta from their opposites (a
question he would have much difficulty in answering), if you ask him
whether the activity of costumers and hairdressers, who ornament
the figures and faces of the women for the ballet and the operetta,
is art; or the activity of Worth, the dressmaker; of scent-makers
and men-cooks, then he will in most cases deny that their activity
belongs to the domain of art. But in this the ordinary man makes a
mistake, just because he is an ordinary man and not a specialist, and
because he has not occupied himself with esthetic questions. Had he
looked into these matters, he would have seen in the great Renan’s
book, _Marc Aurèle_, a dissertation showing that the dressmaker’s
work is art, and that those who do not see in the adornment of
woman an affair of the highest art are very small-minded and dull.
“_C’est le grand art_,” says Renan. Moreover, he would have known
that in many esthetic systems--for instance, in the esthetics of the
learned Professor Kralik, _Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen
Æsthetik, von Richard Kralik_, and in _Les problèmes de l’Esthétique
Contemporaine_, by Guyau--the arts of costume, of taste, and of touch
are included.
“_Es Folgt nun ein Fünfblatt von Künsten, die der subjectiven
Sinnlichkeit entkeimen_” (There results then a pentafoliate of arts,
growing out of the subjective perceptions), says Kralik (p. 175).
“_Sie sind die ästhetische Behandlung der fünf Sinne._” (They are the
esthetic treatment of the five senses.)
These five arts are the following:--
_Die Kunst des Geschmacksinns_--The art of the sense of taste (p.
175).
_Die Kunst des Geruchsinns_--The art of the sense of smell (p. 177).
_Die Kunst des Tastsinns_--The art of the sense of touch (p. 180).
_Die Kunst des Gehörsinns_--The art of the sense of hearing (p. 182).
_Die Kunst des Gesichtsinns_--The art of the sense of sight (p. 184).
Of the first of these--_die Kunst des Geschmacksinns_--he says: _Man
hält zwar gewöhnlich nur zwei oder hochstens drei Sinne für würdig
den Stoff künstlerischer Behandlung abzugeben, aber ich glaube nur
mit bedingtem Recht. Ich will kein allzugroses Gewicht darauf legen,
dass der gemeine Sprachgebrauch manch andere Künste, wie zum Beispiel
die Kochkunst kennt._[30]
And further: _Und es ist doch gewiss eine ästhetische Leistung,
wenn es der Kochkunst gelingt aus einem thierischen Kadaver einen
Gegenstand des Geschmacks in jedem Sinne zu machen. Der Grundsatz
der Kunst des Geschmacksinns (die weiter ist als die sogenannte
Kochkunst) ist also dieser: Es soll alles Geniessbare als Sinnbild
einer Idee behandelt werden und in jedesmaligem Einklang zur
auszudrückenden Idee._[31]
This author, like Renan, acknowledges a _Kostümkunst_ (Art of
Costume) (p. 200), etc.
Such is also the opinion of the French writer, Guyau, who is highly
esteemed by some authors of our day. In his book, _Les Problèmes de
l’esthétique contemporaine_, he speaks seriously of touch, taste, and
smell as giving, or being capable of giving, esthetic impressions:
_Si la couleur manque au toucher, il nous fournit en revanche une
notion que l’œil seul ne peut nous donner, et qui a une valeur
esthétique considérable, celle du_ doux, _du_ soyeux, _du_ poli.
_Ce qui caractérise la beauté du velour c’est sa douceur au toucher
non moins que son brillant. Dans l’idée que nous nous faisons de
la beauté d’une femme, le velouté de sa peau entre comme élément
essentiel._
_Chacun de nous probablement avec un peu d’attention se rappellera
des jouissances du goût, qui out éte de veritables jouissances
esthétiques._[32] And he recounts how a glass of milk drunk by him in
the mountains gave him esthetic enjoyment.
So it turns out that the conception of art as consisting in making
beauty manifest is not at all so simple as it seemed, especially now,
when in this conception of beauty are included our sensations of
touch and taste and smell, as they are by the latest esthetic writers.
But the ordinary man either does not know, or does not wish to know,
all this, and is firmly convinced that all questions about art
may be simply and clearly solved by acknowledging beauty to be the
content of art. To him it seems clear and comprehensible that art
consists in manifesting beauty, and that a reference to beauty will
serve to explain all questions about art.
But what is this beauty which forms the content of art? How is it
defined? What is it?
As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception
conveyed by a word, with the more _aplomb_ and self-assurance do
people use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so
simple and clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it
actually means.
This is how matters of orthodox religion are usually dealt with,
and this is how people now deal with the conception of beauty. It
is taken for granted that what is meant by the word beauty is known
and understood by everyone. And yet not only is this not known, but
after whole mountains of books have been written on the subject by
the most learned and profound thinkers during one hundred and fifty
years (ever since Baumgarten founded esthetics in the year 1750),
the question, What is beauty? remains to this day quite unsolved,
and in each new work on esthetics it is answered in a new way. One
of the last books I read on esthetics is a not ill-written booklet
by Julius Mithalter, called _Rätsel des Schönen_ (_The Enigma of
the Beautiful_). And that title precisely expresses the position
of the question, What is beauty? After thousands of learned men
have discussed it during one hundred and fifty years, the meaning
of the word beauty remains an enigma still. The Germans answer the
question in their manner, though in a hundred different ways; the
physiological estheticians, especially the Englishmen: Herbert
Spencer, Grant Allen, and his school, answer it each in his own way;
the French eclectics, and the followers of Guyau and Taine, also
each in his own way; and all these people know all the preceding
solutions given by Baumgarten, and Kant, and Schelling, and
Schiller, and Fichte, and Winckelmann, and Lessing, and Hegel, and
Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, and Schasler, and Cousin, and Lévêque and
others.
What is this strange conception of “beauty,” which seems so simple
to those who talk without thinking, but in defining which all the
philosophers of various tendencies and different nationalities can
come to no agreement during a century and a half? What is this
conception of beauty, on which the dominant doctrine of art rests?
In Russian, by the word _krasota_ (beauty) we mean only that which
pleases the sight. And though latterly people have begun to speak of
“an ugly deed,” or of “beautiful music,” it is not good Russian.
A Russian of the common folk, not knowing foreign languages, will not
understand you if you tell him that a man who has given his last coat
to another, or done anything similar, has acted “beautifully,” that a
man who has cheated another has done an “ugly” action, or that a song
is “beautiful.”
In Russian a deed may be kind and good, or unkind and bad. Music may
be pleasant and good, or unpleasant and bad; but there can be no such
thing as “beautiful” or “ugly” music.
Beautiful may relate to a man, a horse, a house, a view, or a
movement. Of actions thoughts character or music, if they please us,
we may say that they are good, or, if they do not please us, that
they are bad. But beautiful can be used only concerning that which
pleases the sight. So that the word and conception “good” includes
the conception of “beautiful”; but the reverse is not true; the
conception “beauty” does not include the conception “good.” If we say
“good” of an article which we value for its appearance, we thereby
say that the article is beautiful; but if we say it is “beautiful,”
it does not at all mean that the article is a good one.
Such is the meaning ascribed by the Russian language, and therefore
by the sense of the people, to the words and conceptions “good” and
“beautiful.”
In all the European languages, that is, in the languages of those
nations among whom the doctrine has spread that beauty is the
essential thing in art, the words “_beau_,” “_schön_,” “beautiful,”
“_bello_,” etc., while keeping their meaning of beautiful in form,
have come also to express “goodness,” “kindness,” that is to say,
have come to act as substitutes for the word “good.”
So that it has become quite natural in those languages to use such
expressions as “_belle âme_,” “_schöne Gedanken_,” or “beautiful
deed.” Those languages no longer have a suitable word wherewith
expressly to indicate beauty of form, and have to use a combination
of words such as “_beau par la forme_,” “_beautiful to look at_,” and
so forth, to convey that idea.
Observation of the divergent meanings which the words “beauty” and
“beautiful” have in Russian on the one hand, and in those European
languages now permeated by this esthetic theory on the other hand,
shows us that the word “beauty” has among the latter acquired a
special meaning, namely, that of “good.”
What is remarkable, moreover, is that since we Russians have begun
more and more to adopt the European view of art, the same evolution
has begun to show itself in our language also, and some people
speak and write quite confidently, and without causing surprise,
of beautiful music and ugly actions, and even of beautiful or ugly
thoughts; whereas forty years ago, when I was young, the expressions
“beautiful music” and “ugly actions” were not only unusual but
incomprehensible. Evidently this new meaning given to beauty by
European thought begins to be assimilated by Russian society.
And what really is this meaning? What is this “beauty” as understood
by the European peoples?
In order to answer this question, I must here quote at least a small
selection of those definitions of beauty most generally adopted in
existing esthetic systems. I particularly beg the reader not to be
overcome by dulness, but to read these extracts through, or still
better to read some one of the erudite esthetic authors. Not to
mention the voluminous German estheticians, a very good book for this
purpose would be either the German book by Kralik, the English work
by Knight, or the French one by Lévêque. It is necessary to read
at least one of the learned esthetic writers in order to form at
first-hand a conception of the variety of opinion and the frightful
obscurity which reigns in this region of speculation; not in this
important matter trusting to another’s report.
This for instance is what the German esthetician Schasler says in the
preface to his famous, voluminous, and detailed work on esthetics:--
“In hardly any sphere of philosophic science can we find such
divergent methods of investigation and exposition, amounting even to
self-contradiction, as in the sphere of esthetics. On the one hand
we have elegant phraseology without any substance, characterised in
great part by most one-sided superficiality; and on the other hand,
accompanying undeniable profundity of investigation and richness
of subject-matter, we get a revolting awkwardness of philosophic
terminology clothing the simplest thoughts in an apparel of abstract
science as though to render them worthy to enter the consecrated
palace of the system; and finally, between these two methods of
investigation and exposition, there is a third, forming as it were
the transition from one to the other, an eclectic method,--now
flaunting an elegant phraseology and now a pedantic erudition....
A style of exposition that falls into none of these three defects
but is truly concrete, and having important matter expresses it in
clear and popular philosophic language, can nowhere be found less
frequently than in the domain of esthetics.”[33]
It is only necessary, as an example, to read Schasler’s own book to
convince oneself of the justice of this observation of his.
On the same subject the French writer, Véron, in the preface to his
very good work on esthetics, says, “_Il n’y a pas de science, qui ait
été plus que l’esthétique livrée aux rêveries des métaphysiciens.
Depuis Platon jusqu’aux doctrines officielles de nos jours, on a fait
de l’art je ne sais quel amalgame de fantaisies quintessenciées, et
de mystères transcendant aux qui trouvent leur expression suprême
dans la conception absolue du Beau idéal, prototype immuable et divin
des choses réelles_” (_L’esthétique_, 1878, p. 5).[34]
If the reader will only be at the pains to peruse the following
extracts defining beauty, taken from the chief writers on esthetics,
he may convince himself that this censure is thoroughly deserved.
I shall not quote the definitions of beauty attributed to the
ancients,--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others, down to
Plotinus,--because, in reality, the ancients had not that conception
of beauty separated from goodness which forms the basis and aim of
esthetics in our time. By referring the judgments of the ancients on
beauty to our conception of it, as is usually done in esthetics, we
give the words of the ancients a meaning which is not theirs.[35]
CHAPTER III
_Summary of various esthetic theories and definitions, from
Baumgarten to the present day._
I begin with the founder of esthetics, Baumgarten (1714–1762).
According to Baumgarten,[36] the object of logical knowledge is
Truth, the object of esthetic (_i. e._, sensuous) knowledge is
Beauty. Beauty is the Perfect (the Absolute), recognised through the
senses; Truth is the Perfect perceived through reason; Goodness is
the Perfect reached by moral will.
Beauty is defined by Baumgarten as a correspondence, that is, an
order of the parts in their mutual relations to each other and in
their relation to the whole. The aim of beauty itself is to please
and excite a desire, “_Wohlgefallen und Erregung eines Verlangens_.”
(A position precisely the opposite to Kant’s definition of the nature
and sign of beauty.)
With reference to the manifestations of beauty, Baumgarten considers
that the highest embodiment of beauty is visible to us in nature, and
he therefore thinks that the highest aim of art is to copy nature.
(This position also is directly contradicted by the conclusions of
the latest estheticians.)
Passing over the unimportant followers of Baumgarten,--Maier,
Eschenburg, and Eberhard,--who only slightly modified the doctrine
of their teacher by dividing the pleasant from the beautiful, I
will quote the definitions given by writers who came immediately
after Baumgarten and defined beauty in quite another way. These
writers were Sulzer, Mendelssohn, and Moritz. They, in contradiction
to Baumgarten’s main position, recognise as the aim of art not
beauty, but goodness. Thus Sulzer (1720–1777) says, only that can
be considered beautiful which contains goodness. According to his
theory, the aim of the whole life of humanity is welfare in social
life. This is attained by the education of the moral feelings, to
which end art should be subservient. Beauty is that which evokes and
educates this feeling.
Beauty is understood almost in the same way by Mendelssohn
(1729–1786). According to him, art is the development of the
beautiful, obscurely recognised by feeling, till it becomes the true
and good. The aim of art is moral perfection.[37]
For the estheticians of this school the ideal of beauty is a
beautiful soul in a beautiful body. So that these estheticians
completely wipe out Baumgarten’s division of the Perfect (the
Absolute), into the three forms of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; and
Beauty again merges into the Good and the True.
But this conception is not only not maintained by the later
estheticians, but the esthetic doctrine of Winckelmann arises, again
in complete opposition. This divides the mission of art from the aim
of goodness in the sharpest and most positive manner, makes external
beauty the aim of art, and even limits it to visible beauty.
According to the celebrated work of Winckelmann (1717–1767), the law
and aim of all art is beauty only, beauty quite separated from and
independent of goodness. There are three kinds of beauty:--(1) beauty
of form, (2) beauty of idea, expressing itself in the position of the
figure (in plastic art), (3) beauty of expression, attainable only
when the two first conditions are present. This beauty of expression
is the highest aim of art, and is attained in antique art; modern art
should therefore aim at imitating ancient art.[38]
Art is similarly understood by Lessing, Herder, and afterwards by
Goethe and by all the distinguished estheticians of Germany till
Kant, from whose day, again, a different conception of art commences.
Native esthetic theories arose during this period in England, France,
Italy, and Holland, and they, though not taken from the German, were
equally cloudy and contradictory. And all these writers, just like
the German estheticians, founded their theories on a conception of
the Beautiful; understanding beauty in the sense of a something
existing absolutely and more or less intermingled with Goodness, or
having one and the same root. In England almost simultaneously with
Baumgarten, even a little earlier, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Home,
Burke, Hogarth, and others, wrote on art.
According to Shaftesbury (1670–1713), “That which is beautiful is
harmonious and proportionable, what is harmonious and proportionable
is true, and what is at once both beautiful and true is of
consequence agreeable and good.”[39] Beauty, he taught, is recognised
by the mind only. God is fundamental beauty; beauty and goodness
proceed from the same fount.
So that, although Shaftesbury regards beauty as being something
separate from goodness, they again merge into something inseparable.
According to Hutcheson (1694–1747--_Inquiry into the Original of our
Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_), the aim of art is beauty, the essence
of which consists in evoking in us the perception of uniformity and
variety. In the recognition of what is art we are guided by “an
internal sense.” This internal sense may be in contradiction to the
ethical one. So that according to Hutcheson beauty does not always
correspond with goodness, but separates from it and is sometimes
contrary to it.[40]
According to Home, Lord Kames, (1696–1782), beauty is that which is
pleasant. Therefore beauty is defined by taste alone. The standard
of true taste is that the maximum of richness, fulness, strength,
and variety of impression, should be contained within the narrowest
limits. That is the ideal of a perfect work of art.
According to Burke (1729–1797--_Philosophical Inquiry into the
Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful_), the sublime
and beautiful, which are the aim of art, have their origin in the
promptings of self-preservation and of society. These feelings,
examined at their source, are means for the maintenance of the race
through the individual. The first (self-preservation) is attained by
nourishment, defence, and war; the second (society) by intercourse
and propagation. Therefore self-defence and war, which is bound
up with it, is the source of the sublime; sociability and the
sex-instinct, which is bound up with it, is the source of beauty.[41]
Such were the chief English definitions of art and beauty in the
eighteenth century.
During the same period, the writers on art in France, were Père André
and Batteux, with Diderot, D’Alembert, and to some extent Voltaire,
following later.
According to Père André (_Essai sur le Beau_, 1741), there are three
kinds of beauty--divine beauty, natural beauty, and artificial
beauty.[42]
According to Batteux (1713–1780), art consists in imitating the
beauty of nature, its aim being enjoyment.[43] Such also is Diderot’s
definition of art.
The French writers, like the English, hold that it is taste that
decides what is beautiful. And the laws of taste are not only not
laid down, but it is granted that they cannot be settled. The same
view was held by D’Alembert and Voltaire.[44]
According to Pagano, the Italian esthetician of that period, art
consists in uniting the beauties dispersed in nature. The capacity to
perceive these beauties is taste, the capacity to bring them into one
whole is artistic genius. Beauty commingles with goodness, so that
beauty is goodness made visible, and goodness is inner beauty.[45]
According to the opinion of other Italians: Muratori
(1672–1750),--_Riflessioni sopra il buon gusto intorno le science e
le arti_,--and especially Spaletti,[46]--_Saggio sopra la bellezza_
(1765),--art amounts to an egotistical sensation, founded (as with
Burke) on the desire for self-preservation and society.
Among Dutch writers, Hemsterhuis (1720–1790), who had an influence
on the German estheticians and on Goethe, is remarkable. According
to him, beauty is that which gives most pleasure, and that gives
most pleasure which gives us the greatest number of perceptions in
the shortest time. Enjoyment of the beautiful, because it gives the
greatest quantity of perceptions in the shortest time, is the highest
cognition to which man can attain.[47]
Such were the esthetic theories outside Germany during the last
century. In Germany, after Wincklemann, there again arose a
completely new esthetic theory, that of Kant (1724–1804), which
more than all others clears up what this conception of beauty, and
consequently of art, really amounts to.
The esthetic teaching of Kant is founded as follows:--Man has a
knowledge of nature outside him and of himself in nature. In nature
outside himself he seeks for truth; in himself he seeks for goodness.
The first is an affair of pure reason, the other of practical reason
(free-will). Besides these two means of perception, there is also
the judging capacity (_Urteilskraft_), which forms judgments without
reasoning and produces pleasure without desire (_Urtheil ohne Begriff
und Vergnügen ohne Begehren_). This capacity is the basis of esthetic
feeling. Beauty, according to Kant, in its subjective meaning is
that which in general and necessarily, without reasoning and without
practical advantage, pleases; and in its objective meaning it is the
form of an object suitable for its purpose in so far as that object
is perceived without any conception of its utility.[48]
Beauty is defined in the same way by the followers of Kant, among
whom was Schiller (1759–1805). According to Schiller, who wrote much
on esthetics, the aim of art is, as with Kant, beauty, the source of
which is pleasure without practical advantage. So that art may be
called a game, not in the sense of an unimportant occupation, but in
the sense of a manifestation of the beauties of life itself without
other aim than that of beauty.[49]
Besides Schiller, the most remarkable of Kant’s followers in the
sphere of esthetics was Wilhelm Humboldt, who, though he added
nothing to the definition of beauty, explained various forms of
it,--the drama, music, humour, etc.[50]
After Kant, besides the second-rate philosophers, the writers on
esthetics were Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their followers.
Fichte (1762–1814) says that perception of the beautiful proceeds
from this: the world--that is, nature--has two sides: it is the
sum of our limitations, and it is the sum of our free idealistic
activity. In the first aspect the world is limited, in the second
aspect it is free. In the first aspect every object is limited,
distorted, compressed, confined--and we see deformity; in the second
we perceive its inner completeness, vitality, regeneration--and
we see beauty. So that the deformity or beauty of an object,
according to Fichte, depends on the point of view of the observer.
Beauty therefore exists, not in the world but in the beautiful
soul (_schöner Geist_). Art is the manifestation of this beautiful
soul, and its aim is the education, not of the mind only--that is
the business of the _savant_; not of the heart only--that is the
affair of the moral preacher; but of the whole man. And so the
characteristic of beauty lies not in anything external, but in the
presence of a beautiful soul in the artist.[51]
Following Fichte, and in the same direction, Friedrich Schlegel and
Adam Müller also defined beauty. According to Schlegel (1772–1829),
beauty in art is understood too incompletely, one-sidedly, and
disconnectedly. Beauty exists not only in art but also in nature and
in love; so that the truly beautiful is expressed by the union of
art, nature, and love. Therefore, as inseparably one with esthetic
art, Schlegel acknowledges moral and philosophic art.[52]
According to Adam Müller (1779–1829), there are two kinds of beauty:
the one, general beauty, which attracts people as the sun attracts
the planet--this is found chiefly in antique art--and the other,
individual beauty, which results from the observer himself becoming a
sun attracting beauty,--this is the beauty of modern art. A world in
which all contradictions are harmonised is the highest beauty. Every
work of art is a reproduction of this universal harmony.[53] The
highest art is the art of life.[54]
Next after Fichte and his followers came a contemporary of his, the
philosopher Schelling (1775–1845), who has had a great influence
on the esthetic conceptions of our times. According to Schelling’s
philosophy, art is the production or result of that conception of
things by which the subject becomes its own object, or the object
its own subject. Beauty is the perception of the infinite in the
finite. And the chief characteristic of works of art is unconscious
infinity. Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective,
of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and
therefore art is the highest means of knowledge. Beauty is the
contemplation of things in themselves as they exist in the prototype
(_in den Urbildern_). It is not the artist who by his knowledge of
skill produces the beautiful but the idea of beauty in him itself
produces it.[55]
Of Schelling’s followers the most noticeable was Solger
(1780–1819--_Vorlesungen über Aesthetik_). According to him, the idea
of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see
only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination,
may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to
creation.[56]
According to another follower of Schelling, Krause (1781–1832), true,
positive beauty is the manifestation of the Idea in an individual
form; art is the actualization of the beauty existing in the sphere
of man’s free spirit. The highest stage of art is the art of life,
which directs its activity towards the adornment of life so that it
may be a beautiful abode for a beautiful man.[57]
After Schelling and his followers came the new esthetic doctrine of
Hegel, which is held to this day, consciously by many but by the
majority unconsciously. This teaching is not only no clearer or
better defined than the preceding ones, but is if possible even more
cloudy and mystical.
According to Hegel (1770–1831), God manifests himself in nature and
in art in the form of beauty. God expresses himself in two ways:
in the object and in the subject--in nature and in spirit. Beauty
is the shining of the Idea through matter. Only the soul and what
pertains to it is truly beautiful, and therefore the beauty of nature
is only the reflection of the natural beauty of the spirit--the
beautiful has only a spiritual content. But the spiritual must appear
in sensuous form. The sensuous manifestation of spirit is only
appearance (_schein_), and this appearance is the only reality of the
beautiful. Art is thus the production of this appearance of the Idea,
and is a means, together with religion and philosophy, of bringing to
consciousness, and of expressing, the deepest problems of humanity
and the highest truths of the spirit.
Truth and beauty according to Hegel are one and the same thing; the
difference being only that truth is the Idea itself as it exists in
itself and is thinkable. The Idea, manifested externally, becomes to
the apprehension not only true but beautiful. The beautiful is the
manifestation of the Idea.[58]
Following Hegel came his many adherents: Weisse, Arnold Ruge,
Rosenkrantz, Theodor Vischer and others.
According to Weisse (1801–1867), art is the introduction
(_Einbildung_) of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into
external, dead, indifferent matter, the perception of which latter
apart from the beauty brought into it presents the negation of all
existence in itself (_Negation alles Fürsichseins_).
In the idea of truth, Weisse explains, lies a contradiction between
the subjective and the objective sides of knowledge, in that an
individual _ego_ discerns the Universal. This contradiction can be
removed by a conception that should unite into one the universal and
the individual, which fall asunder in our conceptions of truth. Such
a conception would be reconciled (_aufgehoben_) truth. Beauty is such
a reconciled truth.[59]
According to Ruge (1802–1880), a strict follower of Hegel, beauty is
the Idea expressing itself. The spirit, contemplating itself, either
finds itself expressed completely, and then that full expression
of itself is beauty; or incompletely, and then it feels the need
to alter this imperfect expression of itself, and becomes creative
art.[60]
According to Vischer (1807–1887), beauty is the Idea in the form of
a finite phenomenon. The Idea itself is not indivisible, but forms a
system of ideas which may be represented by ascending and descending
lines. The higher the idea the more beauty it contains; but even the
lowest contains beauty, because it forms an essential link of the
system. The highest form of the Idea is personality, and therefore
the highest art is that which has for its subject-matter the highest
personality.[61]
Such were the theories of the German estheticians in the Hegelian
direction, but they did not monopolise esthetic dissertations. In
Germany, side by side and simultaneously with the Hegelian theories,
there appeared theories of beauty not only independent of Hegel’s
position (that beauty is the manifestation of the Idea), but directly
contrary to this view, denying and ridiculing it. Such was the line
taken by Herbart and more particularly by Schopenhauer.
According to Herbart (1776–1841), there is not and cannot be any
such thing as beauty existing in itself. What does exist is only
our opinion, and it is necessary to find the base of this opinion
(_Aesthetisches Elementarurtheil_). Such bases are connected with our
impressions. There are certain relations which we term beautiful;
and art consists in finding these relations, which are simultaneous
in painting, the plastic art, and architecture; successive and
simultaneous in music; and purely successive in poetry. In
contradiction to the former estheticians, Herbart holds that objects
are often beautiful which express nothing at all, as, for instance,
the rainbow, which is beautiful for its lines and colours, and not
for its mythological connection with Iris or Noah’s rainbow.[62]
Another opponent of Hegel was Schopenhauer, who denied Hegel’s whole
system, his esthetics included.
According to Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Will objectivizes itself in
the world on various planes; and although the higher the plane on
which it is objectivized the more beautiful it is, yet each plane has
its own beauty. Renunciation of one’s individuality and contemplation
of one of these planes of manifestation of Will gives us a perception
of beauty. All men, says Schopenhauer, possess the capacity to
objectivize the Idea on different planes. The genius of the artist
has this capacity in a higher degree, and therefore makes a higher
beauty manifest.[63]
After these more eminent writers there followed, in Germany, less
original and less influential ones, such as Hartmann, Kirchmann,
Schnaase, and, to some extent, Helmholtz (as an esthetician),
Bergmann, Jungmann, and an innumerable host of others.
According to Hartmann (1842), beauty lies, not in the external world,
nor in “the thing in itself,” neither does it reside in the soul of
man, but it lies in the “seeming” (_Schein_) produced by the artist.
The thing in itself is not beautiful, but it is transformed into
beauty by the artist.[64]
According to Schnaase (1798–1875), there is no perfect beauty in the
world. In nature there is only an approach towards it. Art gives what
nature cannot give. In the energy of the free _ego_, conscious of
harmony not found in nature, beauty is disclosed.[65]
Kirchmann (1802–1884) wrote on experimental esthetics. All aspects
of history in his system are joined by pure chance. Thus according
to him there are six realms of history:--the realm of Knowledge,
of Wealth, of Morality, of Faith, of Politics, and of Beauty; and
activity in the last-named realm is art.[66]
According to Helmholtz (1821–1894), who wrote on beauty as it relates
to music, beauty in musical productions is attained only by following
unalterable laws. These laws are not known to the artist; so that
beauty is manifested by the artist unconsciously, and cannot be
subjected to analysis.[67]
According to Bergmann (b. 1840) (_Ueber das Schöne_, 1887), to
define beauty objectively is impossible. Beauty is only perceived
subjectively, and therefore the problem of esthetics is to define
what pleases whom.[68]
According to Jungmann (d. 1885), firstly, beauty is a suprasensible
quality of things; secondly, beauty produces in us pleasure by merely
being contemplated; and thirdly, beauty is the foundation of love.[69]
The esthetic theories of the chief representatives of France,
England, and other nations, in recent times have been the following:--
In France during this period the prominent writers on esthetics were
Cousin, Jouffroy, Pictet, Ravaisson, Lévêque.
Cousin (1792–1867) was an eclectic and a follower of the German
idealists. According to his theory, beauty always has a moral
foundation. He disputes the doctrine that art is imitation and that
the beautiful is what pleases. He affirms that beauty may be defined
objectively and that it essentially consists in variety in unity.[70]
After Cousin came Jouffroy (1796–1842), who was a pupil of Cousin’s
and also a follower of the German estheticians. According to his
definition, beauty is the expression of the invisible by those
natural signs which manifest it. The visible world is the garment by
means of which we see beauty.[71]
The Swiss writer Pictet repeated Hegel and Plato, supposing beauty
to exist in the direct and free manifestation of the divine Idea
revealing itself in sense forms.[72]
Lévêque was a follower of Schelling and Hegel. He holds that beauty
is something invisible behind nature--a force or spirit revealing
itself in ordered energy.[73]
Similar vague opinions about the nature of beauty were expressed by
the French metaphysician Ravaisson, who considered beauty to be the
ultimate aim and purpose of the world. “_La beauté la plus divine et
principalement la plus parfaite contient le secret du monde._”[74]
And again:--“_Le monde entier est l’œuvre d’une beauté absolue, qui
n’est la cause des choses que par l’amour qu’elle met en elles._”[75]
I purposely quote these metaphysical expressions in the original,
because, however cloudy the Germans may be, the French, once they
absorb the theories of the Germans and take to imitating them, far
surpass them in uniting heterogeneous conceptions into one expression
and putting forward one meaning or another indiscriminately. For
instance, the French philosopher Lachelier, when discussing beauty,
says:--_Ne craignons pas de dire, qu’une vérité, qui ne serait pas
belle, ne serait qu’un jeu logique de notre esprit et que la seule
vérité solide et digne de ce nom c’est la beauté_.[76]
Besides the esthetic idealists who wrote and still write under the
influence of German philosophy, the following recent writers have
also influenced the comprehension of art and beauty in France: Taine,
Guyau, Cherbuliez, Coster, and Véron.
According to Taine (1828–1893), beauty is the manifestation of the
essential characteristic of any important idea more completely than
it is expressed in reality.[77]
Guyau (1854–1888) taught that beauty is not something exterior to the
object itself,--is not, as it were, a parasitic growth on it,--but
is itself the actual blossoming forth of that on which it appears.
Art is the expression of reasonable and conscious life, evoking in us
both the deepest consciousness of existence and the highest feelings
and loftiest thoughts. Art lifts man from his personal life into
the universal life, not only by participation in the same ideas and
beliefs, but also by similarity in feeling.[78]
According to Cherbuliez, art is an activity, (1) satisfying our
innate love of forms (_apparences_), (2) endowing these forms with
ideas, (3) affording pleasure alike to our senses, heart, and reason.
Beauty is not inherent in objects, but is an act of our souls. Beauty
is an illusion; there is no absolute beauty. But what we consider
characteristic and harmonious appears beautiful to us.
Coster held that the ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true,
are innate. These ideas illumine our minds and are identical with
God, who is Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. The idea of Beauty includes
unity of essence, variety of constitutive elements, and order, which
brings unity into the various manifestations of life.[79]
For the sake of completeness, I will further cite some of the very
latest writings upon art.
_La Psychologie du beau et de l’art, par Mario Pilo_ (1895), says
that beauty is a product of our physical feelings. The aim of art
is pleasure, but this pleasure (for some reason) he considers to be
necessarily highly moral.
The _Essai sur l’art contemporain, par Fierens Gevaert_ (1897), says
that art rests on its connection with the past and on the religious
ideal of the present which the artist holds when giving to his work
the form of his individuality.
Then again, Sar Peladan’s _L’art idéaliste et mystique_ (1894) says
that beauty is one of the manifestations of God. _Il n’y a pas
d’autre Réalité que Dieu, il n’y a pas d’autre Vérité que Dieu, il
n’y a pas d’autre Beauté, que Dieu_ (p. 33).[80] This book is very
fantastic and very illiterate, but is characteristic in the positions
it takes up, and noticeable on account of a certain success it is
having with the younger generation in France.
All the esthetics diffused in France up to the present time are
similar in kind, but among them Véron’s _L’esthétique_ (1878) forms
an exception, being reasonable and clear. That work, though it does
not give an exact definition of art, at least rids esthetics of the
cloudy conception of an absolute beauty.
According to Véron (1825–1889), art is the manifestation of emotion
transmitted externally by a combination of lines, forms, colours, or
by a succession of movements, sounds, or words subjected to certain
rhythms.[81]
In England during this period, writers on esthetics define beauty
more and more frequently not by its own qualities but by taste, and
the discussion of beauty is superseded by a discussion of taste.
After Reid (1704–1796), who acknowledged beauty as being entirely
dependent on the spectator, Alison, in his _Essay on the Nature and
Principles of Taste_ (1790), proved the same thing. From another side
this was also asserted by Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), the grandfather
of the celebrated Charles Darwin.
He says that we consider beautiful that which is connected in our
conception with what we love. Richard Knight’s work, _An Analytical
Inquiry into the Principles of Taste_, also tends in the same
direction.
Most of the English theories of esthetics are on the same lines.
The prominent writers on esthetics in England during the nineteenth
century were Charles Darwin (to some extent), Herbert Spencer, Grant
Allen, Ker, and Knight.
According to Charles Darwin (1809–1882--_Descent of Man_, 1871),
beauty is a feeling natural not only to man but also to animals, and
consequently to the ancestors of man. Birds adorn their nests and
esteem beauty in their mates. Beauty has an influence on marriages.
Beauty includes a variety of diverse conceptions. The origin of the
art of music is the call of the males to the females.[82]
According to Herbert Spencer (b. 1820), the origin of art is
play, a thought previously expressed by Schiller. In the lower
animals all the energy of life is expended in life-maintenance and
race-maintenance; in man however there remains, after these needs are
satisfied, some superfluous strength. This excess is used in play,
which passes over into art. Play is an imitation of real activity,
so is art. The sources of esthetic pleasure are threefold:--(1)
That “which exercises the faculties affected in the most complete
way, with the fewest drawbacks from excess of exercise,” (2) “the
difference of a stimulus in large amount, which awakens a glow of
agreeable feeling,” (3) the partial revival of the same, with special
combinations.[83]
In Todhunter’s _Theory of the Beautiful_ (1872), beauty is infinite
loveliness, which we apprehend both by reason and by the enthusiasm
of love. The recognition of beauty as being such, depends on
taste; there can be no criterion for it. The only approach to a
definition is found in culture. (What culture is, is not defined.)
Intrinsically, art--that which affects us through lines, colours,
sounds, or words--is not the product of blind forces but of
reasonable ones, working with mutual helpfulness towards a reasonable
aim. Beauty is the reconciliation of contradictions.[84]
Grant Allen is a follower of Spencer, and in his _Physiological
Æsthetics_ (1877) he says that beauty has a physical origin. Esthetic
pleasures come from the contemplation of the beautiful, but the
conception of beauty is obtained by a physiological process. The
origin of art is play: when there is a superfluity of physical
strength man gives himself to play; when there is a superfluity
of receptive power man gives himself to art. The beautiful is
that which affords the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of
waste. Differences in the estimation of beauty proceed from taste.
Taste can be educated. We must have faith in the judgments “of the
finest-nurtured and most discriminative” men. These people form the
taste of the next generation.[85]
According to Ker’s _Essay on the Philosophy of Art_ (1883), beauty
enables us to make part of the objective world intelligible to
ourselves without being troubled by reference to other parts of it,
as is inevitable in science. So that art destroys the opposition
between the one and the many, between the law and its manifestation,
between the subject and its object, by uniting them. Art is the
revelation and vindication of freedom, because it is free from the
darkness and incomprehensibility of finite things.[86]
According to Knight’s _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, Part II (1893),
beauty is (as with Schelling) the union of object and subject, the
drawing forth from nature of that which is cognate to man, and the
recognition in oneself of what is common to all nature.
The opinions on beauty and on art here mentioned are far from
exhausting what has been written on the subject. And every day fresh
writers on esthetics arise, in whose disquisitions appear the same
enchanted confusion and contradictoriness in defining beauty. Some
by inertia continue the mystical esthetics of Baumgarten and Hegel,
with sundry variations; others transfer the question to the region
of subjectivity, and seek for the foundation of the beautiful in
questions of taste; others--the estheticians of the very latest
formation--seek the origin of beauty in the laws of physiology; and
finally, others again investigate the question quite independently
of the conception of beauty. Thus, Sully in his _Sensation and
Intuition: Studies in Psychology and Æsthetics_ (1874) dismisses
the conception of beauty altogether; art, by his definition, being
the production of some permanent object or passing action fitted to
supply active enjoyment to the producer and a pleasurable impression
to a number of spectators or listeners, quite apart from any personal
advantage derived from it.[87]
CHAPTER IV
_Definitions of art founded on beauty. Taste not definable.
A clear definition needed to enable us to recognise works of
art._
To what do these definitions of beauty amount? Not reckoning the
thoroughly inaccurate definitions of beauty which fail to cover the
conception of art and suppose beauty to consist either in utility,
or in adjustment to a purpose, or in symmetry, or in order, or in
proportion, or in smoothness, or in harmony of the parts, or in unity
amid variety, or in various combinations of these,--not reckoning
these unsatisfactory attempts at objective definition, all the
esthetic definitions of beauty lead to two fundamental conceptions.
The first is that beauty is something having an independent existence
(existing in itself), that it is one of the manifestations of the
absolutely Perfect, of the Idea, of the Spirit, of Will, or of God;
the other is that beauty is a kind of pleasure received by us, not
having personal advantage for its object.
The first of these definitions was accepted by Fichte, Schelling,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, and the philosophising Frenchmen: Cousin,
Jouffroy, Ravaisson, and others, not to enumerate the second-rate
esthetic philosophers. And this same objective-mystical definition of
beauty is held by a majority of the educated people of our day. It is
a conception very widely spread especially among the elder generation.
The second view, that beauty is a certain kind of pleasure received
by us, not having personal advantage for its aim, finds favour
chiefly among the English esthetic writers, and is shared by the
other part of our society, principally by the younger generation.
So there are (and it could not be otherwise) only two definitions
of beauty: the one objective, mystical, merging this conception
into that of the highest perfection, God--a fantastic definition,
founded on nothing; the other on the contrary a very simple, and
intelligible, subjective one, which considers beauty to be that
which pleases (I do not add to the word “pleases” the words “without
the aim of advantage,” because “pleases” naturally presupposes the
absence of the idea of profit).
On the one hand beauty is viewed as something mystical and very
elevated, but unfortunately at the same time very indefinite, and
consequently embracing philosophy, religion, and life itself (as
in the theories of Schelling and Hegel and their German and French
followers); or on the other hand (as necessarily follows from the
definition of Kant and his adherents), beauty is simply a certain
kind of disinterested pleasure received by us. And this conception
of beauty, although it seems very clear, is unfortunately again
inexact; for it widens out on the other side, that is, it includes
the pleasure derived from drink, from food, from touching a delicate
skin, and so forth, as is acknowledged by Guyau, Kralik, and others.
It is true that, following the development of the esthetic doctrines
on beauty, we may notice that though at first (in the times when
the foundations of the science of esthetics were being laid) the
metaphysical definition of beauty prevailed, yet the nearer we get
to our own times the more does an experimental definition (recently
assuming a physiological form) come to the front, so that at last
we even meet with estheticians such as Véron and Sully, who try to
escape entirely from the conception of beauty. But such estheticians
have very little success, and with the majority of the public as well
as of artists and the learned, a conception of beauty is firmly held
which agrees with the definitions contained in most of the esthetic
treatises, that is, which regards beauty either as something mystical
or metaphysical, or as a special kind of enjoyment.
What then is this conception of beauty, so stubbornly held to by
people of our circle and day as furnishing a definition of art?
In its subjective aspect, we call beauty that which supplies us with
a particular kind of pleasure.
In its objective aspect, we call beauty something absolutely perfect,
and we acknowledge it to be so only because we receive from the
manifestation of this absolute perfection a certain kind of pleasure:
so that this objective definition is nothing but the subjective
conception differently expressed. In reality both conceptions of
beauty amount to one and the same thing, namely, the reception by us
of a certain kind of pleasure; that is to say, we call “beauty” that
which pleases us without evoking in us desire.
Such being the position of affairs, it would seem only natural that
the science of art should decline to content itself with a definition
of art based on beauty (that is, on that which pleases), and should
seek a general definition applicable to all artistic productions, by
reference to which we might decide whether a certain article belonged
to the realm of art or not. But no such definition is supplied, as
the reader may see from those summaries of esthetic theories which
I have given, and as he may discover even more clearly from the
original esthetic works if he will be at the pains to read them. All
attempts to define absolute beauty in itself--whether as an imitation
of nature, or as suitability to its object, or as a correspondence
of parts, or as symmetry, or as harmony, or as unity in variety, and
so forth--either define nothing at all, or define only some traits
of some artistic productions and are far from including all that
everybody has always held and still holds to be art.
There is no objective definition of beauty. The existing definitions
(both the metaphysical and the experimental) amount only to one and
the same subjective definition which is (strange as it seems to say
so), that art is that which makes beauty manifest, and beauty is that
which pleases (without exciting desire). Many estheticians have felt
the insufficiency and instability of such a definition and in order
to give it a firm basis have asked themselves why a thing pleases.
And they have converted the discussion on beauty into a question
of taste, as did Hutcheson, Voltaire, Diderot, and others. But all
attempts to define what taste is must lead to nothing, as the reader
may see both from the history of esthetics and experimentally. There
is and can be no explanation of why one thing pleases one man and
displeases another, or _vice versâ_. So that the whole existing
science of esthetics fails to do what we might expect from it, being
a mental activity calling itself a science, namely, it does not
define the qualities and laws of art, or of the beautiful (if that
be the content of art), or the nature of taste (if taste decides
the question of art and its merit), and then on the basis of such
definitions acknowledge as art those productions which correspond to
these laws and reject those which do not come under them. But this
science of esthetics consists in first acknowledging a certain set of
productions to be art (because they please us), and then framing such
a theory of art that all these productions which please a certain
circle of people should fit into it. There exists an art-canon
according to which certain productions favoured by our circle are
acknowledged as being art,--the works of Phidias, Sophocles, Homer,
Titian, Raphael, Bach, Beethoven, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, and
others,--and the esthetic laws must be such as to embrace all these
productions. In esthetic literature you will incessantly meet
with opinions on the merit and importance of art founded not on
any certain laws by which this or that is held to be good or bad
but merely on the consideration whether this art tallies with the
art-canon we have drawn up.
The other day I was reading a far from ill-written book by Folgeldt.
Discussing the demand for morality in works of art, the author
plainly says that we must not demand morality in art. And in proof
of this he advances the fact that, if we admit such a demand,
Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_ and Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_ would
not fit into the definition of good art; but since both these books
are included in our canon of art, he concludes that the demand is
unjust. And therefore it is necessary to find a definition of art
which shall fit the works; and instead of a demand for morality,
Folgeldt postulates as the basis of art a demand for the important
(_Bedeutunsvolles_).
All the existing esthetic standards are built on this plan. Instead
of giving a definition of true art and then deciding what is and
what is not good art by judging whether a work conforms or does
not conform to the definition, a certain class of works, which for
some reason pleases a certain circle of people, is accepted as
being art, and a definition of art is then devised to cover all
these productions. I recently came upon a remarkable instance of
this method in a very good German work, _The History of Art in the
Nineteenth Century_, by Muther. Describing the pre-Raphaelites, the
Decadents, and the Symbolists (who are already included in the canon
of art), he not only does not venture to blame their tendency, but
earnestly endeavours to widen his standard so that it may include
them all, since they appear to him to represent a legitimate reaction
from the excesses of realism. No matter what insanities appear in
art, when once they find acceptance among the upper classes of our
society a theory is quickly invented to explain and sanction them;
just as if there had never been periods in history when certain
special circles of people recognised and approved false, deformed,
and insensate art which subsequently left no trace and has been
utterly forgotten. And to what lengths the insanity and deformity
of art may go, especially when as in our days it knows that it is
considered infallible, may be seen by what is being done in the art
of our circle to-day.
So that the theory of art founded on beauty, expounded by esthetics
and in dim outline professed by the public, is nothing but the
setting up as good of that which has pleased and pleases us, that is,
pleases a certain class of people.
In order to define any human activity it is necessary to understand
its sense and importance. And in order to do this, it is primarily
necessary to examine that activity in itself, in its dependence on
its causes, and in connection with its effects, and not merely in
relation to the pleasure we can get from it.
If we say that the aim of any activity is merely our pleasure and
define it solely by that pleasure, our definition will evidently be
a false one. But this is precisely what has occurred in the efforts
to define art. Now if we consider the food question, it will not
occur to anyone to affirm that the importance of food consists
in the pleasure we receive when eating it. Everyone understands
that the satisfaction of our taste cannot serve as a basis for our
definition of the merits of food, and that we have therefore no right
to presuppose that the dinners with cayenne pepper, Limburg cheese,
alcohol, and so on, to which we are accustomed and which please us,
form the very best human food.
In the same way, beauty, or that which pleases us, can in no sense
serve as a basis for the definition of art; nor can a series of
objects which afford us pleasure serve as the model of what art
should be.
To see the aim and purpose of art in the pleasure we get from it, is
like assuming (as is done by people of the lowest moral development,
for instance by savages) that the purpose and aim of food is the
pleasure derived when consuming it.
Just as people who conceive the aim and purpose of food to be
pleasure cannot recognise the real meaning of eating, so people
who consider the aim of art to be pleasure cannot realise its true
meaning and purpose, because they attribute to an activity the
meaning of which lies in its connection with other phenomena of
life, the false and exceptional aim of pleasure. People come to
understand that the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of
the body, only when they cease to consider that the object of that
activity is pleasure. And it is the same with regard to art. People
will come to understand the meaning of art only when they cease to
consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, that is to say,
pleasure. The acknowledgment of beauty (that is, of a certain kind
of pleasure received from art) as being the aim of art, not only
fails to assist us in finding a definition of what art is but, on the
contrary, by transferring the question into a region quite foreign
to art (into metaphysical, psychological, physiological, and even
historical discussions as to why such a production pleases one person
and such another displeases or pleases someone else), it renders
such definition impossible. And since discussions as to why one man
likes pears and another prefers meat do not help towards finding
a definition of what is essential in nourishment, so the solution
of questions of taste in art (to which the discussions on art
involuntarily come) not only does not help to make clear what this
particular human activity which we call art really consists in, but
renders such elucidation quite impossible until we rid ourselves of a
conception which justifies every kind of art at the cost of confusing
the whole matter.
To the question, What is this art, to which is offered up the labour
of millions, the very lives of men, and even morality itself? we
have extracted replies from the existing esthetics which all amount
to this: that the aim of art is beauty, that beauty is recognised
by the enjoyment it gives, and that artistic enjoyment is a good
and important thing, because it _is_ enjoyment. In a word, that
enjoyment is good because it is enjoyment. Thus what is considered
the definition of art is no definition at all, but only a shuffle to
justify existing art. Therefore, however strange it may seem to say
so, in spite of the mountains of books written about art no exact
definition of art has been constructed. And the reason of this is
that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.
CHAPTER V
_Definitions of art not founded on beauty. Tolstoy’s
definition. The extent and necessity of art. How people in the
past distinguished good from bad in art._
What is art if we put aside the conception of beauty, which
confuses the whole matter? The latest and most comprehensible
definitions of art, apart from the conception of beauty, are the
following:--(1) _a_, Art is an activity arising even in the animal
kingdom, and springing from sexual desire and the propensity
to play (Schiller, Darwin, Spencer), and _b_, accompanied by a
pleasurable excitement of the nervous system (Grant Allen). This is
the physiological-evolutionary definition. (2) Art is the external
manifestation, by means of lines, colours, movements, sounds, or
words, of emotions felt by man (Véron). This is the experimental
definition. According to the very latest definition (Sully), (3) Art
is “the production of some permanent object or passing action which
is fitted not only to supply an active enjoyment to the producer,
but to convey a pleasurable impression to a number of spectators or
listeners, quite apart from any personal advantage to be derived from
it.”
Notwithstanding the superiority of these definitions to the
metaphysical definitions which depended on the conception of beauty,
they are yet far from exact. The first, the physiological-evolutionary
definition (1) _a_, is inexact, because instead of speaking about the
artistic activity itself, which is the real matter in hand, it treats
of the derivation of art. The modification of it, _b_, based on the
physiological effects on the human organism, is inexact because
within the limits of such definition many other human activities
can be included, as has occurred in the neo-esthetic theories which
reckon as art the preparation of handsome clothes, pleasant scents,
and even of victuals.
The experimental definition, (2), which makes art consist in the
expression of emotions, is inexact because a man may express his
emotions by means of lines, colours, sounds, or words, and yet may
not act on others by such expression--and then the manifestation of
his emotions is not art.
The third definition (that of Sully) is inexact because in the
production of objects or actions affording pleasure to the producer
and a pleasant emotion to the spectators or hearers apart from
personal advantage, may be included the showing of conjuring tricks
or gymnastic exercises, and other activities which are not art. And,
further, many things the production of which does not afford pleasure
to the producer and the sensation received from which is unpleasant:
such as gloomy, heart-rending scenes in a poetic description or a
play, may nevertheless be undoubted works of art.
The inaccuracy of all these definitions arises from the fact that
in them all (as also in the metaphysical definitions) the object
considered is the pleasure art may give and not the purpose it may
serve in the life of man and of humanity.
In order correctly to define art it is necessary first of all to
cease to consider it as a means to pleasure, and to consider it as
one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot
fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between
man and man.
Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind
of relationship both with him who produced or is producing the art,
and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently,
receive the same artistic impression.
Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as
a means of union among them, and art serves a similar purpose. The
peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it
from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas
by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he
transmits his feelings.
The activity of art is based on the fact that a man receiving through
his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is
capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed
it. To take the simplest example: one man laughs and another, who
hears, becomes merry; or a man weeps and another, who hears, feels
sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man, seeing him,
is brought to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the
sounds of his voice a man expresses courage and determination or
sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A
man suffers, manifesting his sufferings by groans and spasms, and
this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his
feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain
objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same
feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same
objects, persons, or phenomena.
And it is on this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression
of feeling, and to experience those feelings himself, that the
activity of art is based.
If a man infects another or others directly, immediately, by his
appearance or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he
experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he
himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself
is obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is
suffering--that does not amount to art.
Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or
others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling
by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a
boy having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf,
relates that encounter; and in order to evoke in others the feeling
he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the
encounter, the surroundings, the wood, his own lightheartedness,
and then the wolf’s appearance, its movements, the distance between
himself and the wolf, and so forth. All this, if only the boy when
telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived
through, and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what he
had experienced--is art. Even if the boy had not seen a wolf but had
frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the
fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted
it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced
when he feared the wolf, that also would be art. And just in the
same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of
suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in
imagination), expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that
others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or
imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair,
courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of
these feelings, and expresses them by sounds so that the hearers are
infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the
composer.
The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most
various--very strong or very weak, very important or very
insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love of one’s
country, self-devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed
in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of
voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a
triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humour evoked by a
funny story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening
landscape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a
beautiful arabesque--it is all art.
If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which
the author has felt, it is art.
_To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced and, having
evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colours,
sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that
others experience the same feeling--this is the activity of art._
_Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man
consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others
feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these
feelings and also experience them._
Art is not as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some
mysterious Idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the esthetical
physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of
stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by
external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and,
above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men,
joining them together in the same feelings and indispensable for the
life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity.
As, thanks to man’s capacity to express thoughts by words, every man
may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by
all humanity before his day, and can, in the present, thanks to this
capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in
their activity and can also himself hand on to his contemporaries and
descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others as well as
those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man’s capacity
to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that
is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him,
as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago,
and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to
others.
If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived
by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own
thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kasper Hauser.[88]
And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art,
people might be almost more savage still, and above all more
separated from, and more hostile to, one another.
And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as
important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused.
As speech does not act on us only in sermons, orations, or books,
but in all those remarks by which we interchange thoughts and
experiences with one another, so also art, in the wide sense of
the word, permeates our whole life, but it is only to some of its
manifestations that we apply the term in the limited sense of the
word.
We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see
in theatres, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings,
statues, poems, novels.... But all this is but the smallest part of
the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human
life is filled with works of art of every kind--from cradle-song,
jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, to
church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It
is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the
word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but
only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which
we attach special importance.
This special importance has always been given by all men to that
part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their
religious perception, and this small part they have specifically
called art, attaching to it the full meaning of the word.
That was how men of old--Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle--looked on
art. Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard
art. Thus it was, and still is, understood by the Mohammedans, and
thus is it still understood by religious folk among our own peasantry.
Some teachers of mankind--as Plato in his _Republic_, and people
such as the primitive Christians, the strict Mohammedans, and the
Buddhists--have gone so far as to repudiate all art.
People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent
view of to-day which regards any art as good if only it affords
pleasure) held and hold that art (as contrasted with speech, which
need not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its power to
infect people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by
banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art.
Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they
denied what cannot be denied--one of the indispensable means of
communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not less
wrong are the people of civilised European society of our class and
day, in favouring any art if it but serves beauty, that is, gives
people pleasure.
Formerly, people feared lest among the works of art there might
chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art
altogether. Now they only fear lest they should be deprived of any
enjoyment art can afford, and patronise any art. And I think the last
error is much grosser than the first, and that its consequences are
far more harmful.
CHAPTER VI
_How art for the sake of pleasure has come into esteem.
Religions indicate what is good and bad. Church Christianity.
The Renaissance. Scepticism of the upper classes. They
confound beauty with goodness._
But how could it happen that that very art which in ancient times was
merely tolerated (if tolerated at all), should have come in our times
to be invariably considered a good thing if only it affords pleasure?
It has resulted from the following causes. The estimation of the
value of art (that is, of the feelings it transmits) depends on men’s
perception of the meaning of life; depends on what they hold to be
the good and the evil of life. And what is good and what is evil is
defined by what are termed religions.
Humanity unceasingly moves forward from a lower, more partial and
obscure, understanding of life to one more general and more lucid.
And in this as in every movement there are leaders--those who have
understood the meaning of life more clearly than others--and of
these advanced men there is always one who has in his words and
by his life expressed this meaning more clearly, lucidly, and
strongly than others. This man’s expression of the meaning of life,
together with those superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies which
usually form round the memory of such a man, is what is called a
religion. Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension
of life accessible to the best and foremost men at a given time in
a given society; a comprehension towards which all the rest of that
society must inevitably and irresistibly advance. And therefore
religions alone have always served, and still serve, as bases for
the valuation of human sentiments. If feelings bring men nearer the
ideal their religion indicates, if they are in harmony with it and do
not contradict it, they are good; if they estrange men from it and
oppose it they are bad.
If the religion places the meaning of life in worshipping one God
and fulfilling what is regarded as His will, as was the case among
the Jews, then the feelings flowing from love of that God and of
His law, successfully transmitted through the art of poetry by the
prophets, by the psalms, or by the epic of the book of Genesis, are
good, high art. All opposing that, as for instance the transmission
of feelings of devotion to strange gods, or of feelings incompatible
with the law of God, would be considered bad art. Or if, as was the
case among the Greeks, the religion places the meaning of life in
earthly happiness, in beauty and in strength, then art successfully
transmitting the joy and energy of life would be considered good
art, but art transmitting feelings of effeminacy or despondency
would be bad art. If the meaning of life is seen in the well-being
of one’s nation, or in honouring one’s ancestors and continuing
the mode of life led by them, as was the case among the Romans and
the Chinese respectively, then art transmitting feelings of joy at
the sacrifice of one’s personal well-being for the common weal, or
at the exaltation of one’s ancestors and the maintenance of their
traditions, would be considered good art; but art expressing feelings
contrary to these would be regarded as bad. If the meaning of life is
seen in freeing oneself from the yoke of animalism, as is the case
among the Buddhists, then art successfully transmitting feelings that
elevate the soul and humble the flesh will be good art, and all that
transmits feelings strengthening the bodily passions will be bad art.
In every age and in every human society there exists a religious
sense, common to that whole society, of what is good and what is
bad, and it is this religious conception that decides the value of
the feelings transmitted by art. And therefore among all nations art
which transmitted feelings considered to be good by this general
religious sense was recognised as being good and was encouraged, but
art which transmitted feelings considered to be bad by this general
religious sense was recognised as being bad and was rejected. All the
rest of the immense field of art by means of which people communicate
one with another was not esteemed at all and was only noticed when it
ran counter to the religious conception of its age, and then merely
to be repudiated. Thus it was among all nations,--Greeks, Jews,
Indians, Egyptians, and Chinese,--and so it was when Christianity
appeared.
The Christianity of the first centuries recognised as productions
of good art only legends, lives of saints, sermons, prayers and
hymn-singing, evoking love of Christ, emotion at his life, desire to
follow his example, renunciation of worldly life, humility, and the
love of others; all productions transmitting feelings of personal
enjoyment they considered to be bad and therefore rejected, for
instance, tolerating plastic representations only when they were
symbolical, they rejected all the pagan sculptures.
This was so among the Christians of the first centuries, who accepted
Christ’s teaching if not quite in its true form at least not in the
perverted, paganised form in which it was accepted subsequently.
But besides this Christianity, from the time of the wholesale
conversion of nations by order of the authorities, as in the days of
Constantine, Charlemagne, and Vladimir, there appeared another, a
Church-Christianity, which was nearer to paganism than to Christ’s
teaching. And this Church-Christianity, in accordance with its own
teaching, estimated quite otherwise the feelings of people and the
productions of art which transmitted those feelings.
This Church-Christianity not only did not acknowledge the fundamental
and essential positions of true Christianity,--the immediate
relationship of each man to the Father, the consequent brotherhood
and equality of all men, and the substitution of humility and love
in place of every kind of violence,--but on the contrary having set
up a heavenly hierarchy similar to the pagan mythology and having
introduced the worship of Christ, of the Virgin, of angels, of
apostles, of saints, and of martyrs, and not only of these divinities
themselves but also of their images, it made blind faith in the
Church and its ordinances the essential point of its teaching.
However foreign this teaching may have been to true Christianity,
however degraded not only in comparison with true Christianity but
even with the life-conception of Romans such as Julian and others,
it was for all that, to the barbarians who accepted it, a higher
doctrine than their former adoration of gods, heroes, and good and
bad spirits. And therefore this teaching was a religion to them, and
on the basis of that religion the art of the time was assessed. And
art transmitting pious adoration of the Virgin, Jesus, the saints,
and the angels, a blind faith in and submission to the Church, fear
of torments and hope of blessedness in a life beyond the grave, was
considered good; while all art opposed to this was held to be bad.
The teaching on the basis of which this art arose was a perversion
of Christ’s teaching, but the art which sprang up on this perverted
teaching was nevertheless a true art, because it corresponded to the
religious view of life held by the people among whom it arose.
The artists of the Middle Ages, vitalised by the same source of
feeling--religion--as the mass of the people, and transmitting in
architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, or drama, the
feelings and states of mind they experienced, were true artists; and
their activity, founded on the highest conceptions accessible to
their age and common to the entire people, though for our times a
mean art, was nevertheless a true one, shared by the whole community.
And this was the state of things until, in the upper, rich,
more educated classes of European society, doubt arose as to
the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by
Church-Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum
development of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes
became acquainted with the wisdom of the classics, and saw on the one
hand the reasonable lucidity of the teaching of the ancient sages and
on the other hand the incompatibility of the Church doctrine with
the teaching of Christ, they lost all possibility of continuing to
believe the Church teaching.
If in externals they still kept to the forms of Church teaching,
they could no longer believe in it, and held to it only by inertia
and for the sake of influencing the masses, who continued to believe
blindly in Church doctrine, and whom the upper classes for their own
advantage considered it necessary to encourage in those beliefs.
So that a time came when Church-Christianity ceased to be the
general religious doctrine of all Christian people: some--the
masses--continued blindly to believe in it, but the upper
classes--those in whose hands lay the power and wealth and therefore
the leisure to produce art and the means to stimulate it--ceased to
believe that teaching.
In regard to religion the upper circles of the Middle Ages found
themselves in the position the educated Romans were in before
Christianity arose, that is, they no longer believed in the religion
of the masses, but had no beliefs to put in place of the worn-out
Church doctrine, which for them had lost its meaning.
There was only this difference, that whereas for the Romans who lost
faith in their emperor-gods and household-gods it was impossible to
extract anything further from all the complex mythology they had
borrowed from all the conquered nations, and it was consequently
necessary to find a completely new conception of life, the people of
the Middle Ages when they doubted the truth of the Church teaching
had no need to seek a fresh one. That Christian teaching which they
professed in a perverted form as Church doctrine, had mapped out
the path of human progress so far ahead that they had only to rid
themselves of those perversions which hid the teaching announced
by Christ, and to adopt its real meaning--if not completely then
at least in some greater degree than that in which the Church had
held it. And this was partially done not only in the reformations
of Wyclif, Huss, Luther, and Calvin, but by all that current of
non-Church Christianity, represented in earlier times by the
Paulicians and the Bogomilites,[89] and afterwards by the Waldenses
and the other non-Church Christians who were called heretics. But
this could be, and was, done chiefly by poor people--who did not
rule. A few of the rich and strong, as Francis of Assisi and others,
accepted the Christian teaching in its full significance even though
it undermined their privileged positions. But most people of the
upper classes (though in the depth of their souls they had lost faith
in the Church teaching) could not or would not act thus, because
the essence of that Christian view of life which stood ready to be
adopted when once they rejected the Church faith, was a teaching
of the brotherhood (and therefore the equality) of man, and this
negatived those privileges on which they lived, in which they had
grown up and been educated, and to which they were accustomed. Not in
the depth of their hearts believing in the Church teaching,--which
had outlived its age and had no longer any true meaning for
them,--and not being strong enough to accept true Christianity, men
of these rich, governing classes--popes, kings, dukes, and all the
great ones of the earth--were left without any religion, with but the
external forms of one, which they supported as being profitable and
even necessary for themselves, since these forms supported a teaching
which justified the privileges they made use of. In reality these
people believed in nothing, just as the Romans of the first centuries
of our era believed in nothing. But at the same time these were the
people who had the power and the wealth, and these were the people
who rewarded art and directed it.
And, let it be noticed, it was just among these people that there
grew up an art esteemed, not according to its success in expressing
men’s religious feelings but in proportion to its beauty,--in other
words, according to the enjoyment it gave.
No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood
they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian
teaching which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and
powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life,
involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places
life’s meaning in personal enjoyment. And then took place among the
upper classes what is called the Renaissance of science and art,
which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an
assertion that religion is unnecessary.
The Church doctrine is so coherent a system that it cannot be altered
or corrected without destroying it altogether. As soon as doubt arose
with regard to the infallibility of the Pope (and this doubt was then
in the minds of all educated people), doubt inevitably followed as to
the truth of tradition. But doubt as to the truth of tradition is
fatal not only to popery and Catholicism, but also to the whole
Church creed with all its dogmas: the divinity of Christ, the
resurrection, and the Trinity; and it destroys the authority of the
Scriptures, since they were considered to be inspired only because
the tradition of the Church decided it so.
So that the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the
popes and the ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. In
the Church doctrine these people did not believe, for they saw its
insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Peter
of Chelczic,[90] and most of the heretics, in acknowledging the
moral, social teaching of Christ, for that teaching undermined their
social position. So these people remained without any religious view
of life. And having none they could have no standard wherewith to
estimate what was good and what was bad art, but that of personal
enjoyment. And having acknowledged their criterion of what was good
to be pleasure, that is beauty, these people of the upper classes
of European society went back in their comprehension of art to the
gross conception of the primitive Greeks, which Plato had already
condemned. And conformably to this understanding of life a theory of
art was formulated.
CHAPTER VII
_An esthetic theory framed to suit the view of life of the
ruling classes._
From the time that people of the upper classes lost faith in
Church-Christianity, beauty (that is to say, the pleasure received
from art) became their standard of good and bad art. And in
accordance with that view, an esthetic theory naturally sprang up
among those upper classes, justifying such a conception--a theory
according to which the aim of art is to exhibit beauty. The partisans
of this esthetic theory in confirmation of its truth affirmed that
it was no invention of their own, but that it existed in the nature
of things and was recognised even by the ancient Greeks. But this
assertion was quite arbitrary and had no foundation other than
the fact that among the ancient Greeks, in consequence of the low
level of their moral ideal (as compared with the Christian), their
conception of the good, τὸ ἀγαθόν, was not yet sharply divided from
their conception of the beautiful, τὸ καλόν.
That highest perfection of goodness (not only not identical with
beauty but for the most part contrasting with it) which was discerned
by the Jews even in the times of Isaiah and fully expressed by
Christianity, was quite unknown to the Greeks. They supposed that the
beautiful must necessarily also be the good. It is true that their
foremost thinkers--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle--felt that goodness may
happen not to coincide with beauty. Socrates expressly subordinated
beauty to goodness; Plato, to unite the two conceptions, spoke of
spiritual beauty; while Aristotle demanded from art that it should
have a moral influence on people (κάθαρσις). But notwithstanding all
this, they could not quite dismiss the notion that beauty and goodness
coincide.
Consequently, in the language of that period, a compound word
(καλοκἀγαθία, beauty-goodness) came into use to express that notion.
Evidently the Greek sages began to draw near to that perception
of goodness which is expressed in Buddhism and in Christianity,
but got entangled in defining the relation between goodness and
beauty. Plato’s reasoning about beauty and goodness is full of
contradictions. And it was just this confusion of ideas that those
Europeans of a later age, who had lost all faith, tried to elevate
into a law. They tried to prove that this union of beauty and
goodness is inherent in the very essence of things; that beauty and
goodness must coincide; and that the word and conception καλοκἀγαθία
(which had a meaning for Greeks but has none at all for Christians)
represents the highest ideal of humanity. On this misunderstanding
the new science of esthetics was built up: and to justify its
existence the teachings of the ancients on art were twisted so that
it should appear that this invented science of esthetics had existed
among the Greeks.
In reality the reasoning of the ancients on art was quite unlike
ours. As Benard, in his book on the esthetics of Aristotle, quite
justly remarks: _Pour qui veut y regarder de près, la théorie du
beau et celle de l’art sont tout à fait séparées dans Aristote,
comme elles le sont dans Platon et chez tous leurs successeurs_
(_L’esthétique d’Aristote et de ses successeurs_, Paris, 1889,
p. 28).[91] And, indeed, the reasoning of the ancients on art
not only does not confirm our science of esthetics, but rather
contradicts its doctrine of beauty. But nevertheless all the esthetic
guides, from Schasler to Knight, declare that the science of the
beautiful--esthetic science--was begun by the ancients, by Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle; and was continued, they say, to some extent by the
Epicureans and Stoics, by Seneca and Plutarch, down to Plotinus.
But it is supposed that this science, by some unfortunate accident,
suddenly vanished in the fourth century and stayed away for about
1500 years, and only after these 1500 years had passed did it revive
in Germany, A. D. 1750, in Baumgarten’s doctrine.
After Plotinus, says Schasler, fifteen centuries passed away during
which there was not the slightest scientific interest shewn for the
world of beauty and art. These one and a half thousand years, says
he, have been lost to esthetics and have contributed nothing towards
the erection of the learned edifice of this science.[92]
In reality nothing of the kind happened. The science of esthetics,
the science of the beautiful, neither did nor could vanish, because
it never existed. Simply the Greeks (just like everybody else, always
and everywhere) considered art (like everything else) good only when
it served goodness (as they understood goodness), and bad when it
was in opposition to that goodness. And the Greeks themselves were
so little developed morally that goodness and beauty seemed to them
to coincide. On that obsolete Greek view of life was erected the
science of esthetics, invented by men of the eighteenth century, and
especially shaped and mounted in Baumgarten’s theory. The Greeks (as
anyone may see who will read Benard’s admirable book on Aristotle and
his successors, and Walter’s work on Plato) never had a science of
esthetics.
Esthetic theories arose about one hundred and fifty years ago among
the wealthy classes of the Christian European world, and arose
simultaneously among different nations,--German, Italian, Dutch,
French, and English. The founder and organiser of it, who gave it a
scientific and theoretic form, was Baumgarten.
With a characteristically German external exactitude, pedantry, and
symmetry, he devised and expounded this extraordinary theory. And
notwithstanding its obvious lack of substance, no one else’s theory
so pleased the cultured crowd or was accepted so readily and with
such an absence of criticism. It so suited the people of the upper
classes that to this day, notwithstanding its entirely fantastic
character and the arbitrary nature of its assertions, it is repeated
by learned and unlearned as though it were something indubitable and
self-evident.
_Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli_,[93] and so, or even
more so, theories _habent sua fata_ according to the condition
of error in which that society lives among whom and for whom the
theories are invented. If a theory justifies the false position in
which a certain part of a society is living, then however unfounded
or even obviously false the theory may be, it is accepted and becomes
an article of faith to that section of society. Such, for instance,
was the celebrated and unfounded theory expounded by Malthus, of the
tendency of the population of the world to increase in geometrical
progression but of the means of subsistence to increase only in
arithmetical progression, and of the consequent over-population of
the world; such also was the theory (an outgrowth of the Malthusian)
of selection and struggle for existence as the basis of human
progress. Such again is Marx’s theory, which regards the gradual
destruction of small private production by large capitalistic
production, now going on around us, as an inevitable decree of fate.
However unfounded such theories are, however contrary to all that is
known and confessed by humanity, and however obviously immoral they
may be, they are credulously accepted, pass uncriticised, and are
preached, perhaps for centuries, until the conditions are destroyed
which they served to justify, or until their absurdity has become
too evident. To this class belongs this astonishing theory of the
Baumgartenian Trinity: Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, according to
which it appears that the very best that can be done by the art of
nations after 1900 years of Christian teaching is to choose as the
ideal of their life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage,
slave-holding people who lived 2000 years ago, who imitated the nude
human body extremely well and erected buildings pleasant to look
at. All these incompatibilities pass completely unnoticed. Learned
people write long, cloudy treatises on beauty as a member of the
esthetic trinity of Beauty, Truth, and Goodness; _das Schöne_, _das
Wahre_, _das Gute_; _le Beau_, _le Vrai_, _le Bon_, are repeated
with capital letters by philosophers, estheticians, and artists, by
private individuals, by novelists and by _feuilletonistes_; and they
all think when pronouncing these sacrosanct words that they speak
of something quite definite and solid--something on which they can
base their opinions. In reality these words not only have no definite
meaning, but they hinder us in attaching any definite meaning to
existing art; they are wanted only for the purpose of justifying the
false importance we attribute to an art that transmits every kind of
feeling if only those feelings afford us pleasure.[94]
CHAPTER VIII
_Who have adopted this esthetic theory? Real art needful for
all men. Our art too expensive, too unintelligible, and too
harmful, for the masses. The theory of “the elect” in art._
But if art is a human activity having for its purpose the
transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which
men have risen, how could it be that humanity for a certain rather
considerable period of its existence (from the time people ceased
to believe in Church doctrine down to the present day) should exist
without this important activity, and instead of it should put up with
an insignificant artistic activity only affording pleasure?
To answer this question it is necessary first of all to correct the
current error people make in attributing to our art the significance
of true, universal art. We are so accustomed not only naïvely to
consider the Circassian family the best stock of people, but also the
Anglo-Saxon race the best race if we are Englishmen or Americans, or
the Teutonic if we are Germans, or the Gallo-Latin if we are French,
or the Slavonic if we are Russians, that when speaking of our own
art we feel fully convinced not only that our art is true art, but
even that it is the best and only true art. But in reality our art
is not only not the only art (as the Bible was once held to be the
only book),--it is not even the art of the whole of Christendom, only
of a small section of our part of humanity. It was correct to speak
of a national Jewish, Greek, or Egyptian art, and one may speak of a
now-existing Chinese, Japanese, or Indian art, shared in by a whole
people. Such art common to a whole nation existed in Russia till
Peter the First’s time, and existed in the rest of Europe until the
thirteenth or fourteenth century; but since the upper classes of
European society, having lost faith in the Church teaching, did not
accept real Christianity but remained without any faith, one can
no longer speak of an art of the Christian nations in the sense of
the whole of art. Since the upper classes of the Christian nations
lost faith in Church-Christianity the art of those upper classes
has separated itself from the art of the rest of the people and
there have been two arts--the art of the people, and genteel art.
And therefore the answer to the question how it could happen that
humanity lived for a certain period without real art, replacing it by
art which served enjoyment only, is that not the whole of humanity,
nor even any considerable portion of it, lived without real art, but
only the highest classes of European Christian society, and even they
only for a comparatively short time--from the commencement of the
Renaissance down to our own day.
The consequence of this absence of true art showed itself inevitably
in the corruption of that class which nourished itself on the
false art. All the confused unintelligible theories of art, all
the false and contradictory judgments on art, and particularly the
self-confident stagnation of our art in its false channels--all
arise, from the assertion, which has come into common use and is
accepted as an unquestioned truth but is yet amazingly and palpably
false, the assertion namely that the art of our upper classes[95] is
the whole of art: the true, the only, the universal art. And although
this assertion (which is precisely similar to the assertion made by
religious people of the various Churches, who consider that theirs is
the only true religion) is quite arbitrary and obviously unjust, yet
it is calmly repeated by all the people of our circle with full faith
in its infallibility.
The art we have is the whole of art, the real, the only art, and yet
two-thirds of the human race (all the peoples of Asia and Africa)
live and die knowing nothing of this sole and supreme art. And
even in our Christian society hardly one per cent. of the people
make use of this art which we speak of as being the _whole_ of
art; the remaining ninety-nine per cent. live and die, generation
after generation, crushed by toil and never tasting this art, which
moreover is of such a nature that if they could get it they would
not understand anything of it. We, according to the current esthetic
theory, acknowledge art either as one of the highest manifestations
of the Idea, God, Beauty, or as the highest spiritual enjoyment;
furthermore we hold that all people have equal rights, if not to
material at any rate to spiritual well-being; and yet ninety-nine
per cent. of our European population live and die, generation after
generation, crushed by toil, much of which toil is necessary for the
production of our art which they never use, and we in face of this,
calmly assert that the art which we produce is the real, true, only
art--all of art!
To the remark that if our art is the true art everyone should have
the benefit of it, the usual reply is that if everybody at present
does not make use of existing art, the fault lies not in the art
but in the false organisation of society; that one can imagine to
oneself in the future a state of things in which physical labour
will be partly superseded by machinery, partly lightened by its just
distribution, and that labour for the production of art will be taken
in turns: that there is no need for some people always to sit below
the stage moving the decorations, winding up the machinery, working
at the piano or French horn, and setting type and printing books, but
that the people who do all this work might be engaged only a few
hours per day and in their leisure time might enjoy all the blessings
of art.
That is what the defenders of our exclusive art say. But I think
they do not themselves believe it. They cannot help knowing that
fine art can arise only on the slavery of the masses of the people,
and can continue only as long as that slavery lasts, and they
cannot help knowing that only under conditions of intense hardship
for the workers can specialists--writers, musicians, dancers, and
actors--arrive at that fine degree of perfection to which they do
attain, or produce their refined works of art, and that only under
the same conditions can there be a fine public to appreciate such
productions. Free the slaves of capital, and it will be impossible to
produce such refined art.
But even were we to admit the inadmissible, and say that means may
be found by which art (that art which is considered to be art among
us) may be made accessible to the whole people, another consideration
presents itself showing that fashionable art cannot be the whole of
art, namely the fact that it is completely unintelligible to the
people. Formerly men wrote poems in Latin, but now their artistic
productions are as unintelligible to the common folk as if they were
written in Sanskrit. The usual reply to this is, that if the people
do not now understand this art of ours it only proves that they are
undeveloped, and that this has been so at each fresh step forward
made by art. It has never been understood at first, but afterwards
people have become accustomed to it.
It will be the same with our present art; it will be understood when
everybody is as well educated as are we--the people of the upper
classes--who produce it, say the defenders of our art. But this
assertion is evidently even more untrue than the former, for we
know that the majority of the productions of the art of the upper
classes, such as various odes, poems, dramas, cantatas, pastorals,
pictures, and so forth, which delighted people of the upper classes
when they were produced, never were afterwards either understood
or valued by the great masses of mankind, but have remained, what
they were at first, a mere pastime for the rich people of their
time, for whom alone they ever were of any importance. It is also
often urged in proof of the assertion that the people will some day
understand our art, that some productions of so-called classical
poetry, music, or painting which formerly did not please the masses,
do--now that they have been offered to them from all sides--begin
to please these same masses; but this only shows that the crowd,
especially the half-spoilt town crowd, can easily (its taste having
been perverted) be accustomed to any sort of art. Moreover this art
is not produced by these masses, nor even chosen by them, but is
energetically thrust upon them in those public places in which art is
accessible to the people. For the great majority of working people
our art, besides being inaccessible on account of its costliness, is
strange in its very nature, transmitting as it does the feelings of
people far removed from those conditions of laborious life which are
natural to the great body of humanity. That which is enjoyment to
a man of the rich classes is incomprehensible, as a pleasure, to a
working man, and evokes in him either no feeling at all or a feeling
quite contrary to that which it evokes in an idle and satiated man.
Such feelings as form the chief subjects of present-day art--say,
for instance, honour,[96] patriotism, and amorousness--evoke in a
working man only bewilderment and contempt, or indignation. So that
even if a possibility were given to the labouring classes to see, to
read, and to hear, in their leisure time, all that forms the flower
of contemporary art (as is done to some extent in towns, by means
of picture-galleries, popular concerts, and libraries), the working
man (to the extent to which he is a labourer and has not begun to
pass into the ranks of those perverted by idleness) would be able
to make nothing of our fine art, and if he did understand it, what
he understood would not elevate his soul, but would certainly in
most cases pervert it. To thoughtful and sincere people there can
therefore be no doubt that the art of our upper classes never can
be the art of the whole people. But if art is an important matter,
a spiritual blessing essential for all men (like religion, as the
devotees of art are found of saying), then it should be accessible
to everyone. And if, as in our day, it is not accessible to all
men, then one of two things: either art is not the vital matter it
is represented to be, or that art which we call art is not the real
thing.
The dilemma is inevitable, and therefore clever and immoral people
avoid it by denying one side of it, namely, denying that the common
people have a right to art. These people simply and boldly speak out
and say (what goes to the heart of the matter) that the participators
in and utilisers of what in their esteem is highly beautiful
art, that is, art furnishing the greatest enjoyment, can only be
_schöne Geister_, the elect, as the romanticists called them, the
_Uebermenschen_, as they are called by the followers of Nietzsche;
the vulgar herd which remains, incapable of experiencing these
pleasures, must serve the exalted pleasures of this superior breed of
people. The people who express these views at least do not pretend,
and do not try to combine the incombinable, but frankly admit what
is the case, that our art is an art of the upper classes only. So in
reality art has been, and is, understood by everyone engaged on it in
our society.
CHAPTER IX
_The perversion of our art. It has lost its natural
subject-matter. Has no flow of fresh feeling. Transmits
chiefly three base emotions._
The unbelief of the upper classes of the European world had this
effect, that instead of an artistic activity aiming at transmitting
the highest feelings to which humanity has attained,--those flowing
from religious perception,--we have an activity which aims at
affording the greatest enjoyment to a certain class of society. And
of all the immense domain of art that part has been fenced off, and
is alone called art, which affords enjoyment to the people of this
particular circle.
Apart from the moral effects on European society of such a selection,
out of the whole sphere of art, of what did not deserve such a
valuation, and the acknowledgment of it as important, this perversion
of art has weakened art itself and well-nigh destroyed it. The first
great result was that art was deprived of the infinite, varied, and
profound religious subject-matter proper to it. The second result
was that, having only a small circle of people in view, it lost its
beauty of form and became affected and obscure; and the third and
chief result was that it ceased to be natural or even sincere, and
became thoroughly artificial and brain-spun.
The first result--the impoverishment of subject-matter--followed
because only that is a true work of art which transmits fresh
feelings not before experienced by man. As thought-product is only
then real thought-product when it transmits new conceptions and
thoughts and does not merely repeat what was known before, so also
an art-product is only then a genuine art-product when it brings a
new feeling (however insignificant) into the current of human life.
This explains why children and youths are so strongly impressed by
those works of art which first transmit to them feelings they had not
before experienced.
The same powerful impression is made on people by feelings which
are quite new and have never before been expressed by man. And it
is the source from which such feelings flow that the art of the
upper classes has deprived itself of by estimating feelings, not in
conformity with religious perception but according to the degree of
enjoyment they afford. There is nothing older and more hackneyed
than enjoyment, and there is nothing fresher than the feelings
springing from the religious consciousness of each age. It could not
be otherwise: man’s enjoyment has limits established by his nature,
but the movement forward of humanity, which expresses itself in
religious consciousness, has no limits. At every forward step taken
by humanity--and such steps are taken in consequence of the greater
and greater elucidation of religious perception--men experience new
and fresh feelings. And therefore only on the basis of religious
perception (which shows the highest level of life-comprehension
reached by the men of a certain period) can fresh emotion, never
before felt by man, arise. From the religious perception of the
ancient Greeks flowed the really new, important, and endlessly
varied feelings expressed by Homer and the tragic writers. It was
the same among the Jews, who attained the religious conception of a
single God,--from that perception flowed all those new and important
emotions expressed by the prophets. It was the same for the poets
of the Middle Ages, who, if they believed in a heavenly hierarchy,
believed also in the Catholic commune; and it is the same for a
man of to-day who has grasped the religious conception of true
Christianity--the brotherhood of man.
The variety of fresh feelings flowing from religious perception
is endless, and they are all new, for religious perception is
nothing else than the first indication of that which is coming
into existence, namely, a new relation of man to the world around
him. But the feelings flowing from the desire for enjoyment are on
the contrary not only limited, but were long ago experienced and
expressed. And therefore the lack of belief of the upper classes of
Europe has left them with an art fed on the poorest subject-matter.
The impoverishment of the subject-matter of upper-class art was
further increased by the fact that, ceasing to be religious, it
ceased also to be popular, and this again diminished the range of
feelings which it transmitted. For the range of feelings experienced
by the powerful and the rich, who have no experience of labour
for the support of life, is far poorer, more limited, and more
insignificant, than the range of feelings natural to working people.
People of our circle, estheticians, usually think and say just
the contrary of this. I remember how Goncharev the author, a very
clever and educated man but a thorough townsman and an esthetician,
said to me that after Turgenev’s _Sportsman’s Notebook_ there was
nothing left to write about in peasant life. It was all used up.
The life of working people seemed to him so simple that Turgenev’s
peasant stories had used up all there was to describe. The life of
our wealthy people, with their love affairs and dissatisfaction with
themselves, seemed to him full of inexhaustible subject-matter. One
hero kissed his lady on the palm of her hand, another on her elbow,
and a third somewhere else. One man is discontented through idleness,
and another because people don’t love him. And Goncharev thought that
in this sphere there is no end of variety. And this opinion--that
the life of working people is poor in subject-matter, but that our
life, the life of the idle, is full of interest--is shared by very
many people in our society. The life of a labouring man, with its
endlessly varied forms of labour and the dangers connected with
labour on sea and underground; his migrations, his intercourse with
his employers, overseers, and companions, and with men of other
religions and other nationalities: his struggles with nature and
with wild beasts, his association with domestic animals, his work in
the forest, on the steppe, in the field, the garden, the orchard:
his intercourse with wife and children, not only as with people
near and dear to him but as with co-workers and helpers in labour,
replacing him in time of need: his concern in all economic questions,
not as matters of display or discussion but as problems of life for
himself and his family: his pride in self-suppression and service of
others, his pleasures of refreshment; and the permeation of all these
interests by a religious re-action towards the facts: all this to us,
who have not these interests and possess no religious perception,
seems monotonous in comparison with those small enjoyments and
insignificant cares of our life,--a life, not of labour nor of
production, but of consumption and destruction of that which others
have produced for us. We think the feelings experienced by people of
our day and our class are very important and varied; but in reality
almost all the feelings of people of our class amount to but three
very insignificant and simple feelings--the feeling of pride, the
feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of life.
These three feelings, with their off-shoots, form almost the only
subject-matter of the art of the rich classes.
At first, at the very beginning of the separation of the exclusive
art of the upper classes from universal art, its chief subject-matter
was the feeling of pride. It was so at the time of the Renaissance
and after it, when the chief subject of works of art was the
laudation of the strong--popes, kings, and dukes. Odes and madrigals
were written in their honour, they were extolled in cantatas and
hymns, and their portraits were painted, and their statues carved, in
various adulatory ways.
Next, the element of sexual desire began more and more to enter into
art, and (with very few exceptions, and in novels and dramas almost
without exception) it has now become an essential feature of every
art product of the wealthy classes.